Photo exhibition of hands used for creating, caring, holding, protecting & living

Hand-Made is a striking, original and intriguing new exhibition at Chichester’s Pallant House Gallery, free to access in the Garden Gallery on the ground floor until November 2.

Inspired by the current exhibition Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists, the new exhibition invited artists in Pallant House Gallery’s community programme to reimagine their own self-portraits – specifically their hands.

The exhibition presents a collection of 120 photographic portraits of hands, presenting hands that are used for creating, caring, holding, protecting and living – all captured by photographer Tom Langford. Hands are both intimate and relatively anonymous, but dislayed together, the images symbolise the power of a shared experience, bringing people together from different walks of life and experiences. The common thread is their shared interest in the arts.

Emily Robson, one of the gallery’s community programme managers, explains: “The starting point was a community programme response to our main season exhibition. We worked with a photographer and asked him to photograph people's hands. They had a lot of say in how their hands were photographed. You could think it would become quite repetitive but it's actually so different. Some people are holding things that signify something to them but also the position of people’s hands tells you a lot. We have got 120 portraits up, taking up the whole wall of our garden gallery.

“I think hands are so revealing and so telling. You take hands for granted until perhaps you can't use one of them. The point is they tell a story. You can sense people's characters through the position of their hands but also the objects that they chose to hold. I job share my role with Lucy Padley, and for our picture we held our hands open in a welcoming gesture, one hand each.

“But what was really interesting is when people were holding things, their choice of objects. We've got one person holding a teddy that was really precious to them. We've got someone holding a really beautiful lace prayer veil, and we've got people holding books.

“Not showing people's faces can give a slight anonymity but hands really do show so much, and together it represents the collective spirit of the community programme. We also invited volunteers and staff to take part. It's about the fact that everybody is equal. It felt important to show everyone coming together. You've got front-of-house staff in there, and it's about showing that the gallery is a welcoming space for everyone. There's a real sense that the community programme is absolutely embedded in the life of the gallery.”

The community programme is for anybody that feels they need extra support when engaging with a creative life, Emily explains. It could be people with disability or mental health concerns or neurodiversity: “It is really wide and inclusive.”